It might not officially be one of those often-dreaded musical Meditations On Aging, but for Aesop Rock — seven full-length albums deep and some fifteen years after Labor Days earned him next-level acclaim — he let his facade of interpretation-demanding lyrics crack just enough to let some middle-aged ennui break through. Even as he sounds like the snarling, linguistically oblique worldbeater he always was, he can’t stop considering regrets and losses: his lapsed interest in drawing (“Rings”), his detachment from the lingering juvenilia in his overfamiliar hip-hop circles (“Dorks”), the passing of producer/rapper and close friend Camu Tao (“Get Out of the Car”).

– Nate Patrin